Sunday, June 28, 2009
Unsolicited e-mails
Each week we get requests (thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com) that we highlight this or that.
We try to work in what we can.
But to help everyone out, we'll try clarifying one more time.
We're a site for the left.
So something from ETAN will get highlighted with no problem.
If we don't know you or of you, we'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt.
A number of right-wing outlets e-mail for highlights. In fact, we get repeated e-mails daily on that. We're a site for the left. But we will try to include a link when we can fit it in.
So, for example, check out Net Right Daily for the right-wing take on the day's news.
There are some things we're never interested in.
We're not interested in racist, homophobic or sexist articles, blog posts or events.
We are not interested in highlights that go against our basic premises.
For example, in 2007, Betty staked out the position of this site and this community: Barack Obama is not Black. Barack is bi-racial and he claimed that identity as late as this decade. Following his defeat when he attempted to challenge Bobby Rush, he suddenly became "Black." He's not Black, he's bi-racial. Most of the left may be willing to turn the clock backwards on strides made in diversity, but we're not.
Don't send us your stuff about Barack being Black. We're not interested. He's not. We don't knowingly repeat or highlight lies.
We're not interested in your attacks on Sarah Palin. Funny us, we didn't think it was humorous when you were writing little 'skits' of Hillary in bed when she was attempting to garner the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. We didn't appreciate your efforts to sexualize her. We're not interested in your efforts with Sarah Palin.
We're honestly embarrassed and ashamed of you and think, that like Michael Winship, you need to get over your sexual obsession with Sarah Palin. Not only does it creep us out, it blinds you to anything of value you might be able to say.
Let's stay with sex for a moment. We're really not interested in your garbage on Eliott Spitzer and have never been interested in it. Our position from the start was that a scandal was being used to 'assassinate' Spitzer who was a threat to runaway corporations. We said that then and ignored all the scandal copy produced. We continue to ignore it. If we were married to Spitzer, we might have an opinion on the issue. We're not and we're not interested in crawling through the dirty sheets with a bunch of pervs who should honestly try to get lives of their own.
We're interested in sexual hypocrisy. Meaning, a homophobic politician preaching the joys of same-sex fidelity caught in an affair with someone (same or opposite sex) might interest us for the juxtaposition aspect. Otherwise, we're not interested in crawling around dirty sheets with you. If that's your bag, well that says a lot about you, now doesn't it?
Ourselves we're not sexaully frustrated and don't need to obsess over the sex lives of others.
Moving along, we do not open attachments. That's true of all sites in this community.
We repeatedly wrote back last week asking for alternative e-mails and we're not doing that again. If you're silly enough to think any stranger would open your attachement, you really don't rate a reply of any kind.
If you think we have time for online chats, you're also mistaken. We don't. We spend less and less time online. There are very few sites worth reading anymore. Why? They drank the Kool-Aid and even though they're slowing awakening to the truth, it doesn't thrill us to watch them attempt to reposition themselves and pretend they weren't blindly cheerleading Barack for over a year. We don't go online to chat. We go online to read websites (non news-outlets) less and less. One exception is the ACLU's blog. We've all increased our visits to that site.
Lastly, if you're a blogger, and especially if you're considering packing it in, do not write us after you do so to complain that we never gave you a link. Assume we didn't know of you and e-mail us to ask for a link. We do try to work in links requested and actually manage to do so in many cases. It might mean that someone tosses out three things and the fourth one gets noted, but we do try to. The reasons it's not every time include: (1) we completely disagree with what you've written, (2) we loved what you wrote but (a) felt it was best for an article addressing that topic (b) which we wrote but (c) felt our article was trash and not worth publishing online. Two bloggers packed it in and we heard from them last week. No one would link to them. They were writing with no audience. Or that's how they felt. Had we heard from them before they decided to retire or quit and they asked for a link we would have tried to provide one.
The e-mail address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.